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Sunday, October 11, 2009

RVM 2009

Goal race for the fall season has now come and gone and I am happy to say that I survived, even with my cold and still ran about a minute and a half PB. Woo hoo. I had planned to leave home at about 2:30 yesterday, but event after event happened, whether it was forgetting something, having the cat nearly lock me out of the house (I'll explain in a minute) or fighting with my car to open the hood (which never happened) as I wanted to add washer fluid and oil.

** side story** Socket tries to run out of the house, so we put up a board near the door to delay him a few minutes. Plus we can hear when he jumps over so we can prepare to block the door when coming in. Anyways, he jumped over when I was leaving and then as I locked the door he jumped back towards the living room to go to the window. As he did that, the board fell over and blocked the door. I had about a 2 inch space to fit my hand into, with Socket sticking his paw through the gap as well thinking it is a game, to slowly pull the board back up and out of the way. This is the 2nd time it has happened, stupid cat! ;)

Anyways, I finally made it out by 3pm and traffic was horrible on the way down to Victoria. Not to mention I hit nearly every red light. I ended up driving by the conference center at 4:25 but drove back a few streets to find parking. It took me a bit of time, then I quickly walked to the conference center and arrived late (I was supposed to meet Sam at 4:30, Sorry Sam). She informed me that I am probably classified as an "elite", wtf, so off we went to the elite table to get my number.

After that, we walked back to Sam's where she ever so nicely let me stay at her place which was only 2 blocks if that from the race start. Nice! I was then left on my own, which resulted in me receiving a call from a friend back at the race expo, so I went back there to miss him by 5 minutes. ugh.

Instead, I took some photos around the Parliament buildings, which I cannot take off my camera yet (refer to bottom of post), then went and bought something for dinner along something to eat for breakfast. I think I was in bed by 8:30 with lights out around 9pm. That is early for me. I felt asleep then woke up in a coughing fit and took a bit to get back to sleep. I was awoken a few more times by Sam's upstairs techno neighbours thumping around their place. I tend to sleep crappy before races, hence why I went to bed early.

Next thing, the alarm went off at 5am. I dragged myself up and had some mini bagels and cream cheese and for once I was actually able to eat. Generally in the past, I could never eat much for breakfast as I felt sick to the stomach. I then relaxed and watched some friends until Sam showed up at about 6:30. I met my mom and step dad at 7am near the start and in the process lost Sam, so my warm up was done alone. Not a huge deal though as it was just a short warm up.

So until my warm up, I was stuffed in the nose. After my warm up, my nose started to run. Yep it didn't get any better. My nose was a mess throughout the race, from start to finish. Anyways, stides at the start were completed to stay warm and off we went around 7:30. I started off fairly well, keeping it in control though I was probably a bit faster than I wanted to be. My splits were all over, but it depended also whether it was flat, downhill or uphill.

Honestly, I felt pretty comfortable throughout the hole race, other than my nose of course. Now that was an ugly sight. I had gloves on, 50 cent gloves from Wal-Mart, so they honestly became a kleenex. I also had a kleenex shoved into one of the gloves on the back of my hand but I was saving that until when and if I chose to throw the gloves away, which I never ended up doing. My nose was still dripping though and so a few times, the only way I could get rid of it was to blow some nasty snot rockets. Totally disgusting. I hope no one got a photo of that! I did make sure no one was right beside me when I did it!

I took in a gel for the first time in a race just before 13km and took at least a sip of water at most stations, which is also a first. It was also the first time I didn't feel like hurling in a race, probably because my stomach wasn't empty for once after some breakfast, gels and water. So that is a plus. My nose felt red and raw at the end, but people were polite enough to say that it didn't look that bad (unless they were lying). We'll see when the photos come out.

So basically, a lame actual race report with not much details. I pushed it, yet still kept it fairly comfortable. No idea whether my cold hampered my performance or not. People say statistically it probably did as my immune system was not 100%, but who knows. I still finished in a new PB of 1:24:15 (results here), which beats my old PB from May of this year of 1:25:59. Last year on this same course I ran my then PB of 1:30:54, so that is a nice jump in a year. I was the 7th woman out of 2964 women and 51st overall with 4603 total finishers. I just wish I didn't let the 5th and 6th women go as I pulled them back at the end but it was too late. They finished 14 seconds ahead of me. Next time!

Anyways, here are 2 photos my mom took of me near the final 800m or so. Shows off my not so great form! Ack!

.PS. I have other photos of the night before the race, but its on my older camera as my mom had my good camera. I now have to find the right USB cable to be able to take the photos off the camera. They may get added later or to another post.